Does urban housing affordability affect fertility in China

Tunye Qiu ()
Additional contact information
Tunye Qiu: Australian National University

Journal of Population Research, 2025, vol. 42, issue 4, No 5, 34 pages

Abstract: Abstract This study examines the impact of household-level housing affordability, measured by the Price-to-Income (PTI) ratio, on fertility in urban China. Using data from the 2005 mini-census and an instrumental variable approach, the results show that a 10% increase in the PTI ratio leads to a 0.45% decline in the likelihood of urban women giving birth. This negative effect is observed among both homeowners and renters. Heterogeneity analyses further reveal that women with higher educational attainment and household incomes are disproportionately affected, highlighting the role of socioeconomic status in shaping fertility decisions. These findings are consistent with the Quantity-Quality trade-off theory, which posits that parents with greater human capital and income tend to reduce fertility when the cost of childbearing increases due to worsening housing affordability. The results underscore the broader social implications of housing market dynamics and offer policy insights for addressing fertility decline in urban China.

Keywords: Housing affordability; Fertility; Quantity-Quality trade-off; Human capital; Urban china; J13; O18; R21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12546-025-09402-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joprea:v:42:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s12546-025-09402-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... tudies/journal/12546

DOI: 10.1007/s12546-025-09402-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Research is currently edited by Santosh Jatrana, Dharmalingam Arunachalam, Aude Bernard, Vladimir Canudas-Romo, Ann Evans, Michael Haan, Brian Houle, Trude Lappegård and Gordon Carmichael

More articles in Journal of Population Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().